


freshly blank

by dwyndling



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, credited author was just the fingers necessary, gratuitous skateboard imagery, written by a highly motivated ghost at four in the morning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-13 23:47:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20591129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwyndling/pseuds/dwyndling
Summary: A chance at a normal life...what a novel idea. Like sinking into honey, almost.





	freshly blank

**Author's Note:**

> yoooo this is my first published work for kingdom hearts and i gotta say, ever since nomura took hold of the reins of my life its been a slippery slope. anyway, i fckin ride or die for akusai, there’s not enough content of them, and here is my drop in the ocean for the goal of rectification. i wrote this between 4:30 and 8:00 am on my phone in a poorly lit room, did not have it beta'ed, did not do more than two read throughs, and absolutely did not intend to write this At All, so really the fact that this exists at all is just an accident of debatable happiness. here, have your badass clown men who are in love. this entire fic was a literal accident, i don’t know what you want from me. i don’t know how much more i can underline the fact that when i opened google docs, it was not with the intent to write a 4k word oneshot. that could not have been less on my mind. i genuinely feel bad taking the author credit on this when it actually belongs to whatever benevolent and highly motivated ghost temporarily possessed my body and used my thumbs to write this. thank you, writer ghost, i hope to collaborate more with you in the future.

Perhaps the only thing tying Isa to the present moment is the warm mug in his hand. He’s seated on the couch at Lea’s apartment, the new blue one, which is already beginning to lose a significant amount of firmness with how many people have jumped on it. 

It’s a little startling how quickly the once barren place has begun to look like a proper civilian home. The bookshelves are still a little empty but time will fix that. A collection of frames is beginning above the fireplace, photos of wide smiles snapped on gummiphones in worlds far from here and now painting the wall with their vibrancy. A few textbooks are strewn about the coffee table. The math looks unfamiliar to him, though he’s sure he would’ve learned it at some point. A least two skateboards are dallying in the hall down to the front door, though he is unsure if they both live here or not. 

If his life wasn't what it has been, and if his true definition of the word weren’t something else far more twisted, he might go so far as to label it ‘unsettling’ how easily his old friend has settled into the life of a parental figure. How far he has come...once the unruly youth who plagued the streets and now the guardian of them.

The name Axel no longer touches his ears much at all. Roxas and Xion have shifted to using Lea’s given name, though when or where exactly this change occurred, Isa could not tell you. It’s…well, he hasn’t decided how he feels about it yet. It is as if he has planted his feet in two worlds at once; the past swirling around his ears and the future shining into his eyes. 

He doesn’t remember the last time it ever came up between them in conversation. Has it ever? It seemed neither better or worse to him than the other, but, given his own abandonment of his old name, perhaps it went without saying. The boy he knew as Lea and the man who answered to Axel seem so much the same, and simultaneously worlds and eons apart. Regardless...he says the name like a prayer, almost without thinking.

“Lea.”

Lea graces him with a smile in response. “Hmm?” He doesn’t quite turn around fully, busied with whatever is currently making angry bubbling noises on the stove. 

The stiff cotton of his new jacket is reassuring in lieu of thick leather. “It’s...nothing. What are you making?” He genuinely hasn’t noticed, too absorbed in his own thoughts. It seems poor practice to accept a dinner invitation and proceed to largely ignore your host, but then again, none of Isa’s interactions with Lea have ever really gone the way he starts out thinking they should. 

There’s the soft clacking noise of Lea tapping a spoon on the edge of the pot. “Just noodles. Damn, I’ll have to learn to cook more! I don’t trust any of the kids with a stove at this rate.” He laughs, soft and absentminded.

Hm. The lumpy sensation caught fast in his throat hasn’t plagued him in years and more years. “You never were the best at meal preparation. I remember your mother tried her best, but you never learned to make anything more than sandwiches.” 

Lea turns, only to stick his tongue out at him. “You say that as though you were a culinary master. I have vivid memories of you deciding that a single stick of licorice is a solid meal.” 

The slightest of faux winces. “You wound me.”

His old friend just makes another face at that, though which emotion it’s meant to convey, Isa isn’t entirely sure. Their dynamic has shifted enough times over the years they’ve known one another that the true constants become glaringly obvious, one of which being that while Isa might normally take the upper hand in an argument of logical properties, Lea has an unerring tendency to be three steps ahead of him whenever the topic shifts to a more nebulous nature. Say, that of emotions. 

He’s been having a lot more of those again lately, unsurprisingly. It’s a bit like walking around in a full body cast, each movement jerky and liable to end in a swift tumble if done incorrectly. He’s never truly felt as though he has to walk on eggshells when talking to Lea like this…but the fragility of his own human heart not only keeps him up at night but has him scrutinizing every sentence before it leaves his mouth even more thoroughly than has been his wont. Isa has no idea what their relationship is to Lea at the moment, even if the dregs of what their longtime friendship had been reduced to are slowly but surely building up again into something more substantial. It is…calming, even in the midst of his worries about a verbal misstep. Lea knows what he’s done. He knows what Lea’s done. It’s simpler that way. 

Well...in his head, at least. The tangled knot in his chest is saying differently, but he’s not exactly listening to it right now. One breath at a time. 

If Lea notices that his thoughts have him in a metaphorical stew this evening, he hasn’t said anything yet. He’s still puttering around in the tiny kitchen, humming under his breath as he prepares a meal for four.

The irony is not lost on Isa. If you were to tell the being that he had been of one year ago that he’d be sitting in Axel’s living room on a dinner invitation along with two children that the assassin has befriended (adopted?) he-well, he wouldn’t have laughed per se, but he certainly would’ve curled his lip in ridicule. His only thoughts of that time had been-

...no. The murky memories of his time in both Organizations still linger constantly in his mental peripheral. Sometimes the reassurance of physical reality isn’t enough, and they crowd round him, clamoring a name he no longer uses and singing of his many sins. It’s at its worst when he’s alone.

Hence why, whenever Lea asks him (usually it’s more along the lines of a teasing command or a declarative) to dinner, or lunch, or even breakfast on some occasions, he rarely, if ever, declines. The lingering fear and leaden ball in the pit of his stomach that used to arise with a vengeance whenever the prospect of interacting with Roxas and Xion arose is no longer so debilitating. It helps that they act more and more human by the day, speedrunning through the childhood they never had. Roxas’s eyes glint grey now, less blue than he remembers but even more steely and determined. Xion’s face has taken getting used to all over again, now that she grins with delight and laughs loudly without restraint. He can still clearly recall the first time he saw her as anything other than a perfectly blank replica, Vexen hovering in the background as his eyes initially took in her blank blue irises and choppy dark hair. In contrast to Roxas, her eyes are bluer every day, as if attempting to replace the shade that the sky in Twilight Town never assumes. 

They...well, they don’t hate him, that’s for sure. Isa recalls guiding Xion through her first shaky week as a vessel, clinically instructing her on how to speak and her first steps. He’d been assured by Vexen that there was no need for him to do so; as more of her memories were recovered within her, her awareness would slowly return. Saïx had persisted, grimly, and with no tangible positivity resulting within him from the task. All the same, even if no one were ever to know but him, it felt like the barest genesis of an apology. Xion certainly seemed to at least acknowledge it, spending her next few weeks following him around like a lamb on shaky legs, until the time Xemnas declared her fit to take on her own assignments. In the aftermath, when Saïx was no more and in his place was a still unsteady and uncomfortable Isa, Xion’s deference had been replaced with something more closely resembling an olive branch, showcased in her bright smiles directed solely in his direction, and in her eagerness to show him Twilight Town. She’s not as forward with her affection with him as she is with Lea, but he thinks he might’ve relied more heavily on those bright blue eyes smiling at him in his first weeks back as a human than he’d like to admit. 

As for Roxas...he’s either forgiven Isa, or is very good at hiding a grudge. Isa is fairly certain it’s the second one. Though...it’s not as though Roxas hasn’t hoisted his own white flag of sorts; he’d offered to teach Isa the basics of how to skateboard once, and even if he’s fairly certain the true point of the exercise was for Roxas and his friends to laugh at an adult tripping all over themselves, it’s better than flat out hatred, or even the silent treatment. 

….his hip might still be a tad bruised, but perhaps it’s worth it. 

“Whatcha thinking about?” 

He starts violently, whirling to see Lea’s face suddenly much closer to his own than it had been before, still the same Cheshire Cat grin adorning it. One notable regression of this human body, his senses were nowhere near as sharp as they’d been before. It’s an adjustment for all of them, but Isa thinks his progress might be a bit faster if he were younger….though-

The thought comes to an abrupt halt as Lea invades even more of his personal space, leaning over the back of the couch that Isa is seated on. His head is tilted in approximation of a verbal question.

Belatedly, Isa realizes he hasn’t said anything. “Ah,” is the first intelligent response he can muster, “...sorry. Just lost in thought.” Gingerly, he sets the now empty mug on the coffee table. 

Lea snorts. “Yeah. I could tell. S’why I asked.” A beat of silence. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine.” 

For reasons that remain elusive to Isa, the way he phrases that feels as though it needs an assurance. “No! No, I mean...it’s fine. I’ve just...” He gestures loosely at the textbooks. “Thinking about how far you’ve come.” It’s not as though he can’t play Lea’s own game, and he injects a teasing lilt into his voice. “You’re practically a father now.”

The reaction is immediate. Lea’s face scrunches up into something that resembles both fear and disgust without containing any true substance of either. “A father!? Perish the thought. I haven’t even hit thirty yet!” 

A gently arched brow. “Oh? Thirty? Is that when you’re planning to settle down?” He thinks he’s doing a pretty fair job of ignoring everything that bubbles up within him at the consideration of a thirty year-old Lea somewhere off with a white picket fence. 

Lea bats at his shoulder with no force behind it. “Yeah. Hadn’t I mentioned it? Got a whole retirement fund planned out and everything.”

He rolls his eyes. “Don’t lie, you’ve never planned anything more than ten minutes in advance.” This kind of banter is effortless to slip into, like a script he’s never really forgotten. 

The offended noise that Lea makes is truly impassioned. “Harsh! Don’t tell me you’re forgetting about the time with the four swans and Olly’s Super Sticky Surplus Fish Bait. It took me a whole week to plan that!”

Isa blinks. He had, in fact, almost forgotten about that. It was one of their...less stellar exploits. “It took both of us a week to plan that out, don’t give yourself all the credit.” Now that indeed is a memory that rushes back chaotically vivid now that he’s been reminded of it. 

Draping himself across the back of the couch like a bastard of a throw blanket, Lea shoots him another wide grin. “Man, we got up to so much weird shit as kids...think the park-keeper still remembers us?” 

He wonders if the crotchety old man survived Radiant Garden’s fall. “Undoubtedly. Anyone would be unable to forget those absolute hideous pantaloons you insisted on wearing that summer.” 

He receives another half-hearted prod to the shoulder. “Hey now, they’re not pantaloons, they’re called cargo pants! Everyone wears cargo pants!”

This time, Isa prods back at Lea’s hand, accidentally brushing their knuckles together. “Not everyone wears cargo pants in red and white stripes, you absolute buffoon.” 

He doesn’t even have to look over at Lea to tell he’s smiling widely. “Yeah, well, at least I got points for individuality. How many pairs of matching black skinny jeans did you even own?” 

A moment of silence. “...six.” 

The laughter that graces his ears is enough to warrant digging up the old and dusty memory. It feels as though they’re discussing another reality, or a past that lies thousands of years behind them. He’s known a Lea, and Lea has known an Isa. The man he’s talking to now is somehow both exactly as he remembers him and someone he’s never met before. 

It’s…(exciting) terrifying. 

Lea reorganizes his gangly limbs into sitting next to him on the couch rather than standing behind it. “Hey Isa.”

Is this...peace? 

“Hm?” 

“You…uh…”

It’s not like Lea to hesitate if it’s not for dramatic effect. Isa turns to look at him, curious. 

The expression his companion is wearing is significantly more serious than that of the sly grin that usually hovers around the edges of his expression at all times. “You’re...you like living in Twilight Town, right?” 

He considers for a moment, the one bedroom apartment he’s rented down closer to the river. The nearby coffee shop that supplies his awareness in the twilight mornings. The time he splits between his own place and Lea’s. Trailing a few steps behind Lea and the gaggle of teenagers that hang off of him, shopping around the city. 

When he responds, the visceral honesty that comes with it is not entirely foreign, but it’s like eating a childhood food he hasn’t tasted in years. “Yes. Of course. Why do you ask?” He stares as though the green eyes that are normally so unreadable will give him answers. 

Lea take another few beats to respond. “Well...I got to thinking…”

He can’t resist the jump-in. “Finally.” 

It earns him an elbow in the side and a glance that nudges the borders of wry and fond. “I thought, y’know, maybe you would’ve liked moving back to Radiant Garden a bit more. Our…our old home.” 

Isa tilts his head back to meet the back of the couch, inspecting the lackluster ceiling above them. “Why did you think that?” 

Lea scratches the back of his head in a telltale gesture of insecurity. “Isn’t it obvious? I’ve got the kids here, but you…” He doesn’t seem to know how to finish his sentence, and it trails off into nothingness. 

He bites back another comment on how fluidly Lea has accepted his assumed responsibility towards his wards. “You thought I’d rather be in Radiant Garden.”

An answering nod. Lea looks almost...contrite? No...something else.

Perhaps it’s toeing the line for what's normal and acceptable in a script they’ve had for years, but Isa reaches out to gently rest his hand against Lea’s. “You were the light that guided me back to my humanity. Of course I’d want to live near you.” 

The expression he’s greeted with isn’t really astoundment, but there’s a fair amount of surprise in Lea’s eyes as they stare at each other for a moment. 

...too much? It’s a simple statement of fact on Isa’s part. In his search for their friend, all throughout Saïx’s existence, Lea, and thusly Axel, had been a pinpoint of a guiding star. An immutable force and a constant. Even as they’d drifted apart, further and further apart until the constant crushing emptiness inside Saïx had become a violent chorus of rage and something akin to despair as he learned of a foolhardy assassin’s foolish sacrifice. His own demise followed shortly after, and from what he can gather, there is a fairly significant portion of time that lies blank for him. His next memory is of Xigbar’s face and other, even more unpleasant things to follow, and the dawning realization that if he breathed again then Axel-

The rest has surely been documented by someone else already. In his second death in Saïx’s body, there was hardly any pain, or if there was, he barely noticed it. He can still recall the feeling of Lea’s arms around him, such a far cry from the descent into pure and bitter agony that his first defeat at Sora’s hands had gifted him. Lea was asleep at his bedside when he awoke again, in a body that was decidedly displeased with him for all the antics he’d pulled. Their reunion there had been more than a little awkward, and he had said more sappy things that were only half thought through, and Lea had cried buckets, and a mouse king had popped his head in and out the door at some point, and then Ansem (the Wise) was there and-

It was a busy day, that’s for certain. He shakes aside the memories of the past few months that have led up to today, tuning back into the present, only to find he’s got a sniffling Lea clinging to his hands and it’s strangely a lot less awkward than he might’ve imagined.

The magic of the upside down teardrops, if the tattoos ever had any real magic to begin with, is certainly long gone. Lea, even with fat tears rolling down his face, is calmer than he normally is while crying. “Isa…” He hiccups slightly. 

It’s taking a remarkable amount of self-restraint not to simply reach up and brush away at the swiftly collecting tears, but Isa is hyper-aware of how closely this verges into territory that is a decade old and painfully out of practice. “Hey...there’s no need to cry…” His voice takes on a hushed tone of its own accord, and he finds himself unconsciously leaning closer.

That seems to be all the unspoken invitation Lea needs to crush him into a tight hug and sob into his collar. He’s definitely attempting to communicate something, but whatever knowledge he’s attempting to impart between blubbering sobs isn’t quite making it into the realm of coherence. 

Isa turns to the only way he knows how to deal with a loudly crying armful of Lea anymore, which is to hold him carefully in silence and gently whisper reassuring things when he can get a word in edgewise. He thinks maybe it’s a bitter thing, that he’s glad Xion and Roxas aren’t home yet, but maybe he’s too out of practice with this too.

After a few minutes, Lea calms down enough to speak in a way he can understand. “.....thought I’d lost you for good, a-” a sharp inhale, “-a few times.” 

Isa casts his mind back to the events that transpired in the Keyblade Graveyard. Obviously, he doesn’t remember much of anything after his role had been fulfilled and his inhuman form had passed into shadow, but from scattered things Lea has mentioned and what he’s picked up from listening to some of the others, the final fight against Xehanort and his other selves had continued beyond that and into the night. He’s reluctant to prod Lea for the details, especially when sometimes it feels like that day is only weeks behind them as opposed to months. Who knows what sorts of terror and despair Xehanort would’ve released upon his foes? He can imagine. 

Gently, he smooths down the chaos that Lea calls a hairstyle. “You never truly lost me.” 

A shudder passes through Lea’s body, and he sniffs. “I know that.” He sounds...tired.

Smoothly, he gives into the urge, disentangling his hands from Lea’s and uses his thumbs to wipe away the tear tracks. “Do you?” He can’t help the fond look he’s aware must be on his face. 

Glassy green eyes regard him with a new, incomprehensible, expression. “You know I’d die for you, right?” 

Isa can’t quite hide the blink of surprise that gives him. “Eh? What’s this about?” It’s not the most concerning thing Lea has ever up and told him out of nowhere, but that’s not saying a lot. 

Before his overthinking can decide if it’s the right thing to do, Lea has grabbed both of his hands in his own again. “You should know that. You, Roxas, Xion...I’d never let anything happen to any of you. Never again.” New tears are welling up in his serious gaze. 

Isa is vaguely aware that there are faint sounds of something boiling over in the background, but he rates it a low priority at the moment. “Lea…Xe-” His breath catches and he tries again. “He’s gone. Nothing’s going to happen to us.” 

Lea’s knuckles are pure white, and isn’t that a sight when for so long black leather obscured all. “Something new will come along eventually. Hell, maybe it’ll be something boring like someone will try to mug you or something.” He seems to have the sobs under control by now, even if the tears are a different story. “But I’ll be there! Now I’ve got this keyblade shit on lock, no one’s a match for me!” 

If the sight of Lea grinning triumphantly at him through his tears wasn’t enough to unlock at least one flood of all consuming emotion through his chest, who knows what would have been. Are there tears prickling in his own eyes right now? Perish the thought. There probably are. 

The smile he gives to Lea is perhaps the most vulnerable one he’s managed to conjure up at all in this new era marked by humanity. “...you’re incorrigible.” 

Before Lea can come up with anything to throw back at him, he places his hands deliberately on either side of his partner in crime’s face. “Just so you know, I’d die for you as well, though I hope you know that between the two of us, it won’t come to that anytime soon.” 

In what could be argued was either a temporary lapse in judgement or a fit of pure self-indulgence, he leans forward and presses a featherlight kiss to the center of Lea’s forehead. A promise, or perhaps something as simple as the answer to a question that was never asked out loud.

Lea is looking at him like he’s been burned, although that’s never happened a day that Isa has known him. The absolute flood of thoughts comes pouring back in the next moment, consisting of things like ‘do friends kiss each other tenderly on the forehead?’ and, ‘do friends kiss each other tenderly on the forehead after talking about how they’d die for each other?’ and other fun questions along similar lines. 

Ah well. Isa’s never in his life been the best litmus test for that sort of thing. 

In the next moment, several things happen at once. One, Lea reaches up for him, expression intent. Two, the sound of teenagers approaching the door is increasing in growing peals of laughter and uncareful footfalls. Three, the smoke alarm begins blaring out a merry tune to accompany the culinary demise of whatever is left of the pot on the stovetop. 

With the death of whatever quietude has enveloped them, they instinctively lean apart. Isa resigns himself to the fact that whatever new level of emotional reconnection they’ve established here will have to be re-examined at a later date, preferably after he’s slept on it. His hands return to his lap, and he most certainly does not pay especial attention to the last touch they leave on the smooth skin of Lea’s face.

He forgets to reckon with Lea, which is usually a mistake in any circumstance, as he’s finding out more and more the older he gets. 

Lea, never one to be easily denied when he wants something, leans back in with something smoldering in his eyes. The kiss he plants on Isa is most decidedly not on the debatably-platonic forehead or the slightly less neutral cheek, or even on the nose. 

Ah. Well. There’s that. 

He pulls away in exactly the moment before the door opens, a smile of something like victory taking over his expression, leaving Isa with a peculiar emotion that’s a strong mix of disappointment that it was so short and sheer amazement that it happened at all. There’s probably a slight bit of a years long gratification finally satisfied in there as well, but that’s a suitcase that can be unpacked on another day. 

For now, he lowers his voice so that it hopefully doesn’t quite reach the Roxas and Xion sounding blobs in his peripheral vision, and doesn’t dare take his eyes off of Lea. “We’ll continue this discussion later.” 

The smirk in Lea’s voice is unmistakable, infuriating, and annoyingly attractive. “How forward!” 

He smacks the one of Lea’s wrists that’s still in grabbing reach. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.” Regardless, Isa is powerless to disguise the smile that’s made itself evident on his face. An expression like this still feels foreign, like the cut of a shirt that he hasn’t quite worn in yet. 

Though, Isa thinks, above the noise of Lea trying to deactivate the smoke alarm and the cheerful clamoring of two children who don’t know what a smoke alarm is, he’s eager to see where this leads. His chest is bursting with a million things he has no name for yet, and for once, he thinks maybe the hopeful promises of this future could exceed the happiness of a childhood he’s kept locked up close to his heart for so long. 

At the very least, his guiding star has not failed him yet.


End file.
